My Name

Sandra Cisneros

In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It 

means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the 

Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like 

sobbing. 

It was my great-grandmother’s name and now it is mine. She was a horse

 woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse—which is supposed to be 

bad luck if you’re born female—but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese,

 like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong. 

My great-grandmother. I would’ve liked to have known her, a wild horse of a 

woman, so wild she wouldn’t marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over 

her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That’s 

the way he did it. 

And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her

 whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she 

made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the 

things she wanted to be.  Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to 

inherit her place by the window. 

At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and 

hurt the roof of your mouth.  But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer 

something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister’s name—Magdalena— which is 

uglier than mine.  Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I 

am always Esperanza. 

I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, 

the one nobody sees.  Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the 

X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do. 

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This poem talks about a young girl who is struggling to accept the name she’s been given. Esperanza doesn’t like it and associates a lot of negative things with her Spanish name. She describes it as “too many letters” “muddy” and “sadness” Esperanxa is having a hard time accepting the fate that is given to her and is trying to make it her own, but in the process is completely changing things. For example, at the end of the poem she writes, “I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees.” Here Esperanza, a teen girl, is enthralled with the idea of becoming a new person. Someone’s name is a key part in their identity and Esperanza’s adamence in wanting to change it, voices what so many teens struggle with in life: accepting the person they are and learning how to accept the cards they’ve been dealt with in life. Esperanza is doing the only thing that makes sense in her mind, trying to change her identity to isolate herself from who she is inside. Cisneros does a wonderful job in writing about this and taking on what a teenage girl might experience in her life. 

What I also love about this poem, is the imagery that shines through. The comparisons made to things like sobbing, shaving, or the number nine pulls the emotion out of the poems and allows the reader to be transported to negative moments and allows the reader to relate to the subject being written about, even if you’ve never experienced what the author’s writing about.